We prove that there are no stable intersections of regular Cantor sets in the$C$^{1}topology: given any pair ($K$,$K$′) of regular Cantor sets, we can find, arbitrarily close to it in the$C$^{1}topology, pairs $ \left( {\tilde{K},\tilde{K}'} \right) $ of regular Cantor sets with $ \tilde{K} \cap \tilde{K}' = \emptyset $ .

We construct a conformally invariant random family of closed curves in the plane by welding of random homeomorphisms of the unit circle. The homeomorphism is constructed using the exponential of$βX$, where X is the restriction of the 2-dimensional free field on the circle and the parameter$β$is in the “high temperature” regime $$ \beta < \sqrt {2} $$ . The welding problem is solved by studying a non-uniformly elliptic Beltrami equation with a random complex dilatation. For the existence a method of Lehto is used. This requires sharp probabilistic estimates to control conformal moduli of annuli and they are proven by decomposing the free field as a sum of independent fixed scale fields and controlling the correlations of the complex dilatation restricted to dyadic cells of various scales. For the uniqueness we invoke a result by Jones and Smirnov on conformal removability of Hölder curves. Our curves are closely related to SLE($ϰ$) for$ϰ$<4.

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We construct a new family of high genus examples of free boundary minimal surfaces in the Euclidean unit 3-ball by desingularizing the intersection of a coaxial pair of a critical catenoid and an equatorial disk. The surfaces are constructed by singular perturbation methods and have three boundary components. They are the free boundary analogue of the Costa-Hoffman-Meeks surfaces and the surfaces constructed by Kapouleas by desingularizing coaxial catenoids and planes. It is plausible that the minimal surfaces we constructed here are the same as the ones obtained recently by Ketover using the min-max method.

This volume contains the written account of the Bonn seminar on arith-metic geometry 2003/2004. It gives a coherent exposition of the theory of intersections of modular correspondences. The focus of the seminar is the formula for the intersection number of arithmetic modular correspondences due to Gross and Keating. Other topics treated are Hurwitz's theorem on the intersection of modular correspondences over the field of complex numbers, and the relation of the arithmetic intersection numbers to Fourier coefficients of Siegel-Eisenstein series. Also included is background material on one-dimensional formal groups and their endomorphisms, and on quadratic forms over the ring of p-adic integers.